With construction moving towards a circular economy, it is important to incorporate  design for demountability in order to facilitate re-use at the end of life of buildings and structures.

Demountability of composite floor decks however proved to be challenging, for this reason Tata Steel, together with the Steel Construction Institute (SCI) and other partners, have been working to develop a circular economy solution.

In the 3 year REDUCE (Re-use and Demountability Using steel structures and the Circular Economy) project, tools and technologies to facilitate the re-use of composite - steel structures were developed.

Tata Steel produces a wide range of composite floor decks ranging from 46mm deep to 225mm deep under the brand name ComFlor^®  as such we were the steel-partner in the REDUCE  project team comprising universities, consultants and SCI/Bouwen met Staal.

The project has resulted in technical solutions to re-use ComFlor^® composite floor decking, as well as calculation tools to assess the environmental benefits of re-use. BIM models were also developed to store project/product data for future re- use.

Finally a full scale test, to verify the feasibility of the concept, was executed at the university of Delft.